For us there comes the hope in Paradise--the connection with the living dead--the pulsation through the isthmus of the Church, from sea to sea, from us to them--the tears not without smiles as we think of the long summer-day when Christ who is our life shall appear--the manifestation of the sons of God, when "them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." Our resurrection shall be a fact of history, because His is a fact of history; and we receive it as such--partly from the reasonable motive of reasonable human belief on sufficient evidence for practical conviction. All the long chain of manifold witness to Christ is consummated and crowned when it passes into the inner world of the individual life. "He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in him," _i.e._, in himself![331] Correlative to this, stands a terrible truth. He of whom we must conceive that he believes not God,[332] has made Him a liar--nothing less, because his time for receiving Christ came and went, and with this crisis his unbelief stands a completed present act as the result of his past;[333] unbelief stretching over to the completed witness of God concerning His Son;[334]--human unbelief co-extensive with divine witness. But that sweet witness in a man's self is not merely in books or syllogisms. It is the creed of a living soul. It lies folded within a man's heart, and never dies--part of the great principle of victory[335] fought and won over again in each true life[336]--until the man dies, and ceasing then only because he sees that which is the object of its witness. FOOTNOTES: [314] The writer is entirely persuaded that St. John in chap. xx. 30, 31, refers to the _Resurrection_ "signs," and not to miracles generally. [315] Acts x. 41, 42. It is to be regretted that the R. V. has not boldly given us such an arrangement of the words in this important passage as would at once connect "made manifest" with "after He rose again from the dead," and avoid making the Apostle state that the chosen witnesses ate and drank with Christ after the Resurrection. St. Peter mentions that particular characteristic of the Apostles which made them judges not to be gainsayed of the identity of the Risen One with Him with whom they used to eat and drink. [316] John xiv. 19-21. [317] Τις τουτο ειδεν; γυνη παροιστρος, και ει τις αλλος των εκ της αυτης γοητειας. Ὁτε μεν ηπιστειτο εν σωματι πασιν ανιδην (freely, without restraint) εκηρυττεν, ὁτε δε πιστιν αν ισχυραν παρειχεν εκ νεκρων αναστας ἑνι μονω γυναιω και τοις ἑαυτου θεασιωταις (adepts, initiated) κρυβδην παρεφαινετω ... εχρην ειπερ οντως θειαν δυναμιν εκφηναι ηθελεν ὁ Ιησους αυτοις τοις επηρεασι και τω καταδικασαντι και ὁλως πασιν οφθηναι. [Celsus, _ap. Orig._, 2, 55, 59, 70, 63.] The passage is given in Rudolph Anger's invaluable _Synopsis Evang. cum locis qui supersunt parallelis litterarum et traditionum Evang. Irenæo. antiquiorum._ p. 254.